Skeletorus is a pretty unusual name. You might think that a creature with that
nickname would be a huge monstrous thing, ready to devour humans at the
slightest provocation. I hate to
disappoint you, but despite the spooky name, Maratus sceletus is no monster, unless you happen to be an
arachnaphobe, because Skeletorus is a little bitty spider
A peacock spider, to be precise, Skeletorus was recently
discovered in Australia, along with Maratus
jactatus (aka Sparklemuffin), and is the only known peacock spider to be
strictly black and white. Peacock spiders
get their name from the colorful abdomens of the males. These spiders come in a variety of colors and
patterns, but none of them get any bigger than a pencil eraser.
Even if a spider that size scares you, there is nothing to
worry about. Despite being endemic to
Australia, a country known for its deadly animals, peacock spiders fangs aren’t
big enough to pierce human skin, preferring to hunt crickets and other small
insects.
The males of the peacock spider family use their brightly colored
abdomens to court the females, and will wave it, along with their legs, back
and forth in an effort to impress her, so that they can mate. If the female does not like what she sees,
she’ll simply eat the male and find someone else.
So ummm my city hates me and they think it’s cool to put this giant mechanical spider on top of a cathedral downtown and tonight it’s going to come down and walk the streets?! LITERAL NIGHTMARE.
Meet the star of this story, the jumping spiders. There are more than 5800 known species of jumping spiders to date but they’re mostly the smol, precious cinnamon rolls of the spider world. Just look at how adorbs this fella is!
Back in June, two astronomers on twitter were nerding out about how their jumping spiders office co-habitants respond to laser pointers, like cats!
What a rude cat. You’re not supposed to squish the protagonist.
Being scientists, they even tested and found out that jumping spiders seem to be more interested in green lasers than red ones! At this point, the spider-people of twitter have taken notice of the conversation, and jumped in to thicken the plot.
Apparently, our little fuzzy friends’ eyes (they sure have plenty) are built like Gallilean telescope. This arrangement allows them to have the same visual acuity as some animals like dogs, despite being way way tinier!
Some math-crunching tweets later, space-twitter and spider-twitter jointly declared that jumping spiders are anatomically capable of seeing distant objects as far as the moon. They could potentially even see the color differences on the moon’s surface, instead of just as a speck of light in the sky!
If you’re interested to read more, this The Atlantic article by Ed Yong summarizes the whole exchange better than we ever could.
“I respect [insect/spider/thing] outdoors but IN MY HOME IT DESERVES DEATH” is one of the most common responses I see in regard to treating tiny creatures with respect and it’s just really sad people fall back on that so eagerly to excuse what’s still completely senseless destruction.
A bedbug or a tick or something else that wants your blood, sure, that makes sense, but a spider wandering into your house is still minding its own business hunting flies and crickets. It doesn’t know this big cave “belongs” to an animal that arbitrarily hates it for being there, and no, spiders do not just climb into your bed and bite you in your sleep.
The vast majority of flies, moths, beetles and anything else that small that ends up in your house actively *does not want* to be in such a place because it’s doomed to starve or dehydrate. Others are just trying to come in from the cold, and even if it’s your food they’re after, they don’t know that it’s “your” food. They especially don’t know that it upsets you for something 1/1000th your size to take a bite of that food; most other big animals don’t care, so they have no reason to be cautious of it.
People talk like it’s some kind of delinquency to be punished or something. It feels kinda more like reaching for a justification to enjoy a tiny moment of socially acceptable sadism.
Do what you really have to do to protect yourself from a deadly allergy or something but don’t be an asshole to something just because it made a wrong turn it can’t even comprehend.
Look at this face:
People honestly need to have more compassion for little ones who are visiting.
Education is a huge key to fixing this though! I’ve found that the more information about insects and arachnids you share with others, the more they start to understand that these are living creatures that deserve respect.
What about cockroaches? I’m mixed about them because they are quite cute.
A heavy population of roaches in a house can trigger asthma, and in theory, harbor some dangerous bacteria as their waste builds up. It’s usually only German cockroaches that get “severe” though (the tiny ones) while many other roaches have smaller, less intrusive populations. Larger species like American and Oriental roaches prefer moist conditions, so their presence is more often a symptom of rot or they, too, are just coming in from outside.
The risk of disease from roaches is pretty much highly exaggerated, as they can only pick up disease from their immediate environment. In a relatively clean house, the roaches will be fairly sanitary as well!
The really sad thing about “pest” cockroaches is that they evolved to be beneficial to us. They originally come from caves, where their scavenging habits would have made conditions comparatively cleaner and safer for other, larger animals living there. It’s only in the artificially sterile environment of a modern human house that they become a “contamination” themselves, and seldom even encounter the many predators that would have controlled them in a natural cave.
Most species of cockroach, though, just aren’t cave or house dwellers either way. A lot of people mistakenly think they’ve got a roach problem when they’re just seeing “forest” roaches who, once again, got lost like so many other creatures in the wrong place, and would rather be back outside!
Anyway here’s what I think is the most beautiful roach, Polyzosteria mitchelli:
Also note that roaches experience something a lot like friendship
If you have bugs (including if your indoor pets often get fleas), you most likely have cracks. If you have cracks, you’re wasting energy to heat/cool the outdoors. Keeping the bugs out will also drive down your energy bill. If you have a really bad bug problem, like we did, your energy bill may go down by fifty percent or more when you seal.
Go around your house and find where you see little gaps between your walls and ceiling or floor, and around doors and windows. You may see a lot of insects around these areas, or you may see spiders or spiderwebs. Seal these cracks, then sand and paint over the sealant.
(Hagrid was right: follow the spiders. Once you’ve sealed the bugs’ favorite gaps, the spiders will tell you where their next favorite gaps are.)
A few (well, in our case, a few dozen) cans of foam sealant can transform a leaky, bug-filled nightmare into a livable space.
“I respect [insect/spider/thing] outdoors but IN MY HOME IT DESERVES DEATH” is one of the most common responses I see in regard to treating tiny creatures with respect and it’s just really sad people fall back on that so eagerly to excuse what’s still completely senseless destruction.
A bedbug or a tick or something else that wants your blood, sure, that makes sense, but a spider wandering into your house is still minding its own business hunting flies and crickets. It doesn’t know this big cave “belongs” to an animal that arbitrarily hates it for being there, and no, spiders do not just climb into your bed and bite you in your sleep.
The vast majority of flies, moths, beetles and anything else that small that ends up in your house actively *does not want* to be in such a place because it’s doomed to starve or dehydrate. Others are just trying to come in from the cold, and even if it’s your food they’re after, they don’t know that it’s “your” food. They especially don’t know that it upsets you for something 1/1000th your size to take a bite of that food; most other big animals don’t care, so they have no reason to be cautious of it.
People talk like it’s some kind of delinquency to be punished or something. It feels kinda more like reaching for a justification to enjoy a tiny moment of socially acceptable sadism.
Do what you really have to do to protect yourself from a deadly allergy or something but don’t be an asshole to something just because it made a wrong turn it can’t even comprehend.
Look at this face:
People honestly need to have more compassion for little ones who are visiting.
Education is a huge key to fixing this though! I’ve found that the more information about insects and arachnids you share with others, the more they start to understand that these are living creatures that deserve respect.
What about cockroaches? I’m mixed about them because they are quite cute.
A heavy population of roaches in a house can trigger asthma, and in theory, harbor some dangerous bacteria as their waste builds up. It’s usually only German cockroaches that get “severe” though (the tiny ones) while many other roaches have smaller, less intrusive populations. Larger species like American and Oriental roaches prefer moist conditions, so their presence is more often a symptom of rot or they, too, are just coming in from outside.
The risk of disease from roaches is pretty much highly exaggerated, as they can only pick up disease from their immediate environment. In a relatively clean house, the roaches will be fairly sanitary as well!
The really sad thing about “pest” cockroaches is that they evolved to be beneficial to us. They originally come from caves, where their scavenging habits would have made conditions comparatively cleaner and safer for other, larger animals living there. It’s only in the artificially sterile environment of a modern human house that they become a “contamination” themselves, and seldom even encounter the many predators that would have controlled them in a natural cave.
Most species of cockroach, though, just aren’t cave or house dwellers either way. A lot of people mistakenly think they’ve got a roach problem when they’re just seeing “forest” roaches who, once again, got lost like so many other creatures in the wrong place, and would rather be back outside!
Anyway here’s what I think is the most beautiful roach, Polyzosteria mitchelli:
Also note that roaches experience something a lot like friendship
Spiders are another in the long line of “bugs” proven to evaluate their surroundings, weigh options, and make decisions, i.e. yes, they think, and always have.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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